The waste hierarchy is the cornerstone of European waste policies and legislation. Its primary purpose is to minimise adverse environmental effects from waste and to increase and optimise resource efficiency in waste management and policy.
3.1 What is the impact of the new waste hierarchy and what has changed compared with the previous hierarchy?
The new waste hierarchy, as laid down in Article 4 WFD, is a priority order for waste management, reflecting a general approach under EU waste management law. The hierarchy sets out five possible ways of dealing with waste (although, technically, ‘prevention’ is not a waste-management measure because it concerns substances or objects before they become waste) and prioritises these measures as follows:
• Prevention;
• Preparing for re-use;
• Recycling;
• Other recovery, e.g. energy recovery; and
• Disposal.
This prioritisation lays down a priority order of what constitutes the best overall environmental option in waste legislation and policy.
The most important modifications with respect to the previous waste hierarchy of Directive 2006/12/EC are as follows:
• The former waste hierarchy, which contained prevention, recovery and disposal, has been expanded to five steps;
• ‘Preparing for re-use’ has been introduced as a new concept;
• Previous waste legislation gave equal importance to preparation for re-use, recycling and other recovery. In line with the aims of improving resource efficiency and moving the EU closer to a recycling society (see Recital 28), the new WFD distinguishes between these, and now ranks preparing for re-use above recycling, while recycling is ranked above other types of recovery.
Applying the waste hierarchy has been made mandatory for the Member States, which shall take measures to encourage the options that deliver the best overall environmental outcome. This means that for special waste streams Member States are allowed to depart from the waste hierarchy when this is justified by life-cycle thinking on the overall impacts of the generation and management of those specific waste streams (see Chapter 3.3. below).
3.2 How does life-cycle thinking relate to the waste hierarchy?
Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) is a conceptual approach that considers upstream and downstream benefits and trade-offs associated with goods and services. LCT takes into account the entire life cycle, starting with the extraction of natural resources and including material processing, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, use, and the treatment of waste.
By introducing life-cycle thinking into waste policies, the WFD integrates waste policies, when departing from the waste hierarchy, into the broader framework of reducing environmental pressures and increasing resource efficiency. Over their life-time, products (goods and services) can contribute to various environmental impacts.
The waste hierarchy has been drawn up taking life cycle approaches implicitly into account. Following the waste hierarchy should therefore lead to waste being dealt with in the most resource-efficient and environmentally sound way. Member States can only deviate from the waste hierarchy for specific waste streams and when this is justified by life-cycle thinking. It should be underlined that the Waste Framework Directive only promotes the use of LCT when departing from the waste hierarchy for specific waste streams. When Member States take decisions in line with the waste hierarchy, this does not need to be justified by life-cycle thinking on the overall impacts of the generation and management of the waste concerned.
3.3 Is the waste hierarchy legally binding and under what conditions are departures from the hierarchy allowed?
Pursuant to Article 4(1) WFD, the waste hierarchy shall apply ‘as a priority order in waste prevention and management legislation and policy’.
It should be noted that Article 4(2) WFD gives Member States a degree of flexibility. They are required to encourage those options that deliver the best environmental outcome. This means that achieving this aim may entail departing from the priority order of the waste hierarchy for specific waste streams. Moreover, there has to be a justification for deviating from it and any departure from the hierarchy must be justified on grounds of ‘life-cycle-thinking’. Article 4(2) WFD allows departure from the hierarchy in cases where LCT indicates that the observance of the hierarchy leads to higher environmental impacts. To sum up, derogating from the priority order should comprise an exemption for individual waste streams and needs to be justified on the basis of life-cycle thinking. The third paragraph of Article 4(2) WFD provides that ‘Member States shall take into account the general
environmental protection principles of precaution and sustainability, technical feasibility and economic viability, protection of resources as well as the overall environmental, human health, economic and social impacts’ when applying the waste hierarchy. When applying the waste hierarchy, Member States are required to ensure that the development of waste legislation and policy is a fully transparent process, observing existing national rules about the consultation and involvement of citizens and stakeholders.
Practical examples regarding the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) can be found at: http://lct.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pdf-directory/ReqNo-JRC65850-LB-NA-24916-EN-N.pdf.
3.4 Who has to observe the hierarchy principles?
The addressees of the waste hierarchy are the Member States, which have to respect the waste hierarchy in their waste management policy and legislation.
Also directly concerned are regulators and authorities at regional and local level. The CJEU has repeatedly held that ‘The obligation of a Member State to take all the measures necessary to achieve the result prescribed by a directive, whether general or particular, is binding on all the authorities of Member States including, for matters within their jurisdiction, the courts.’48 This means that the waste hierarchy is to be observed and applied by all the relevant administrative levels within a given Member State that are concerned with waste policies and legislation.
In a number of provisions of WFD (e.g. Articles 8, 10, 15, 21, 22, 28), reference is made to the waste hierarchy emphasising its function as an overall principle, often together with other key principles of the WFD, namely the provisions on protecting human health and the environment set out in Article 13. When implementing these provisions, Member States’
authorities should therefore also consider how to bring the waste hierarchy into effective application in this context.
In particular, Articles 28(1) and 29(1) WFD emphasise that waste management plans and waste prevention programmes must be established in accordance with the waste hierarchy.
Another important area where the waste hierarchy is referred to is the ‘responsibility for waste management’ (Article 15 WFD) which requires Member States to lay down in accordance with Article 4 responsibilities for producers and holders of waste and for other actors in the waste management area. National measures accordingly result in private sector actors such as the waste management industry being also obliged to respect the principles expressed in Article 4 WFD.
48 Case C-129/96 Inter-Environnement Wallonie ASBL v Région wallonne (1997), para 40.
3.5 What is the relation between life-cycle thinking and life-cycle assessment?
The fundamental objective of life-cycling thinking (LCT) is to be aware of the overall environmental impact of the product or service. It aims to ensure that certain environmental impacts are not omitted when evaluating alternatives and to avoid simply shifting an environmental impact from one environmental medium to another. It thus makes decisions transparent, as well as based on sounder grounds and more efficient.
Under the conceptual framework defined by LCT, a number of quantitative decision-support methods exist, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC), and Social LCA (S-LCA). These methods provide comprehensive, science-based support for decision-making and policy-making, in that environmental, social, and cost-related aspects can be simultaneously considered. However, it should be noted that when applying LCT there is no legal obligation under Article 4(2) WFD to use any of these available support methods.
For environmental aspects, LCT is supported in the most comprehensive manner by the use of the quantitative tool Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), as defined by the ISO 14040 and 140444. Among the existing above-mentioned LCT-based methods, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the most widely used method of assessing and quantifying environmental aspects.
Further detailed guidance on applying LCT/LCA to waste management is given in the technical guidance documents published by the JRC.49 As a starting point, the JRC Guidance on LCT/LCA for policy makers and business50 provides a number of approaches to assessing life cycle impacts of products, such as Carbon Footprinting, Material Flow Analysis and Life Cycle Costing.
3.6 How can life-cycle methodology be applied to waste management decisions?
When LCT/LCA are applied to waste management services, the assessments typically focus on a comparison of various waste management options, rather than covering the entire life-cycle of the products which have become waste. For example, when evaluating different options for waste management, the production stages of the food that has become bio-waste are not usually considered. Therefore, LCT/LCA applied to bio-waste management services can differ from product LCT/LCA, which accounts for the entire life-cycle of a product, in which waste management may play only a minor role. However, if one of the waste management options evaluated includes returning materials to the life cycle of a product, the system boundaries of the study should be expanded to include the potential environmental impacts or benefits of such waste management services. For example, when looking at
49 These guidance documents will be published soon as JRC scientific reports on the JRC website.
50 European Commission, Making sustainable consumption and production a reality (2010), available at:
http://lct.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pdf-directory/Making%20sustainable%20consumption%20and%20production
%20a%20reality-A%20guide%20for%20business%20and%20policy%20 makers%20to%20Life%20Cycle
%20Thinking%20and%20Assessment.pdf.
municipal waste management including recycling, the benefits of saving virgin raw materials in the production stages of products have to be taken into account.